Search the Community

A friend of mine - who I met when we were neighbors - sent me a photo of some bones she found sticking out a cliff. She has just joined TFF @Jo Ludgate She wondered if they were Moa. I said yes! And thought it was interesting to find 2 bones together. Where she found them we usually find isolated bones. here’s the photo Jo sent me: There is one bone eroded out, and a toe bone still in the clay. Here they are cleaned up: Well I went back with Jo to see if there was more. We got there in the late evening as that’s when the tide was right. We had 3 hours to check it out. I was really suprised at the setting. It is at the base of a rock slide. The Siltstone has collapsed along a 100m stretch of beach and continues to “ooze” out into the beach and get nibbled at by the ocean. This looked to be a chunk of the Pleistocene deposits incorporated into that rock slide. A miracle that it survived! I carefully dig further into the clay, then saw nothing. I was about to give up and I hit bone after 15 mins!!! in the fading light we saw more and more bone!!! So hard to tell what is bone and the clay is so sticky, like cream cheese! well we had to call it quits and go back the next day. Luckily, the tide hadn’t gotten into the cover we out over our dig and we managed to delineate the bone cluster, pedestal it and extract it as a block. Not enough to have the entire bird, but loads of bones in there. Sorry not much to see as it’s really hard to clean the bones in that sticky clay. Bonus was what looks like fish bones that we got out to the right of the spade. Originally thought it was the continuation of the Moa skeleton.

Not quite a fossil but so interesting this is worth a mention. Absolutely incredible these prints and bones have survived! (check the last pic for the bones) Moa are extinct ratites and were endemic to New Zealand, a couple of species were some of the largest birds to have ever existed standing at about 3.6m tall and weighing an estimated 230kg.

Hey there! I go by Inferothero on this forum, I am from the country New Zealand. I collect many prehistoric fossils and a few more recent extinct New Zealand birds, currently in my collection I have, some theropod teeth, bones (specifically a tyrannosaurus rex bone section) a tendon, a few small fossils in a display, ammonites, oreodont jaw piece, and my favourite, a complete Moa bone femur. I also have a few non-fossils such as elephant teeth and ivory tusk from hogs etc, as of right now I am saving up for a Machairodus horribilis (smilodon) tooth - that is my dream to own a piece from a smilodon or otherwise known as 'saber-tooth.' Although I am not a complete expert I do know my dinosaurs and specifically Moas very well. Maybe sometime in the future, I might put some photos of my Moa bone and other specimens I have in my collection! Hope you enjoyed reading!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/04/on-fossil-poo-and-picky-eaters-a-new-study-sheds-light-on-new-zealands-past-ecosystem